An Apache Christian shares how he was brought out of darkness into God's wonderful light.

Gary Lupe is the first to acknowledge that his faith in Jesus Christ is nothing short of a miracle. But he tells the story of his journey to faith in such a matter-of-fact way that it's easy to overlook the remarkable transformation the Holy Spirit has worked in his life.

DARK BEGINNINGS

Lupe is a child of the reservation. A Native American, he's lived his whole life on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation in Arizona, where he grew up well acquainted with traditional Apache beliefs. He was first exposed to Christ as a teenager through teachers at East Fork Lutheran High School. But whatever faith he had quickly gave way to the temptations and hardships faced by so many of his peers.

Shortly after high school, he got his girlfriend pregnant and they started a family. "We didn't really know right from wrong about living," says Lupe. "We just figured all the Apaches were doing this, and that's the pattern that we followed."

A logging foreman, Lupe was one of the fortunate few on the reservation with a steady job and income. That presented its own temptations. "During that time I fell into alcohol; I became a heavy drinker," Lupe admits. "I was drinking every day. It wasn't hard for me to get a can of beer, a 6-pack, or a 12-pack because that's what I needed."

Even in a desperately poor place like the reservation, he learned money doesn't bring happiness. "I was in a hole—a real deep hole that I couldn't get myself out of," says Lupe. "I was in misery."

But as dark and hopeless as his situation was, Lupe had not yet hit bottom. Not even close. When he and his girlfriend were having their third child together—a daughter who died one month after her premature birth—he gave up alcohol only to replace it with marijuana, cocaine, and "glass."

For the next ten years, he battled the new addiction—but he lost more frequently than he won. Even the births of two more children weren't enough incentive to stay sober permanently. He was a father in title only. "The drugs took control of my life," Lupe recalls. "I spent more money on drugs than I did on my kids."